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“We unknowingly live out this resistance to being known in much of our lives, not the least of which is in our religious practice, as demonstrated by our obsession with knowing and believing the right things about God, about Jesus, about our theology, and about ‘right behavior.’ This imbalanced way of being is often a defense against our feelings of insecurity and shame. …

We delude ourselves into thinking that we know God, but God as we believe him to be – in control and invulnerable – not God as Scripture describes him to be: risk-taking and able to be hurt badly. We no longer have to trust since we’ve got him all figured out.” Curt Thompson, M.D. from Anatomy of the Soul

I thought I did nothing.
I smiled when needed
Or kept myself pleasant.

I thought it was helping.
They said every sign shows
This goodness would win.

I thought I was equal.
I say what they say
And they make me their own.

But I must leave this church of lies;
the one that wants a bridge
to insecurity and shame.

Their god is sure.
He doesn’t know me and
And he can’t be badly hurt.

This church told me,
“You aren’t God.
You are weak.”

I bore the shame
and said I’m weak
Before the predator.

But what they meant was
That I was too weak
And I could not prey with them.

But I ache for love.

The love that didn’t need my agreeable smile.

The love that says my image is theirs.

The love that sought wholeness by my hurting it.

I think I am unequal;
uniquely separate from wholeness.

I think I am helped
By the signs of goodness.

I think I do something.
I smile when needed.

I was motivated to write this poem based on a quote from a book by Curt Thompson, MD that was used in a class at Wesley Seminary last semester. I appreciate his insight in revealing to me this image of God.

He said to him, “You can do this.”
So he then thought, “Well, if this has been done …”

He said to him, “I have done this.”
So then he thought, “I am allowed to try.”

He said to him, “This is my reason.”
So then he thought, “It is a way.”

There was kindness when he said this.
There was esteem when he replied.

Between them

Intimacy.

I am taking a Human Sexuality class at Wesley Seminary. Our guest speaker, Ann Wilson, MSN, talked about countries where men would share stories of using condoms so that other men would think about using birth control.

“They seek to tear down what is restrictive, corrupting and inhibiting in order to build a society in which men may work and live in harmony with nature and each other. They believe in man’s creative potential and the whole movement is dedicated to the proposition that if the Negro could but free himself of the frustrations of an unjust social order, the achievements of the human mind and heart would be limitless.” Martin Luther King, Jr., “After Desegregation–What”, 1961

The mind is my sanctuary
When I think my flesh couldn’t please God
Like some inalienable right.

The heart is my drive
To cast out controlling fear
That shames a sacred rite.

The potential is my hope
In what hangs the earth on nothing
So I see a way to write.

The right is less than I could be.
The rite is what will always be.
To write is to create beyond limited harmony.

from Letters and Papers from Prison By Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
“I will write to you in Italy about the Song of Solomon. I would in fact read it as a song about earthly love, and that is probably the best ‘christological’ interpretation.”

Rightly do they love.
They knew and they desired.
They did not shy to know so that they could desire more.
Knowledge came
and the self apart was full as if incorporated.
The hand outstretched
reckons
the pull
toward
each aspect of existence.
Involuntarily
what is said
speaks
to release pains of thought;
to collectively answer.
It is now
and will ever be.
They rightly loved;
they who moved from right to surrender
in ‘christological’ interpretation.

“The ideal of every science is that of a closed and completed system of truth. … Phenomena unclassifiable within the system are therefore paradoxical absurdities, and must be held untrue.” – William James, The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 1912

“The absence of hybrid species in the Jewish diet is one of its major principles. To belong to two categories is to be in no category or to be unclassifiable…Hebrew dietary laws are imbued with the Jewish idea of God; they convey major principles of holiness.” – Encyclopedia of Modern Jewish Culture, Vol 1, 2005